Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 329, March, 1843
PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS
BY A COCKNEY
When any one thinks of French literature, there immediately rises before him a horrid phantasmagoria of repulsive objects—murders, incests, parricides, and every imaginable shape of crime that horror e'er conceived or fancy feigned. He sees the whole efforts of a press, brimful of power and talent, directed against every thing that has hitherto been thought necessary to the safety of society, or the happiness of domestic life—marriage deliberately written down, and proved to be the cause of all the miseries of the social state: and strange to say, in the crusade against matrimony, the sharpest swords and strongest lances are wielded by women. Those women are received into society—men's wives and daughters associate with them—and their books are noticed in the public journals without any allusions to the Association for the prevention of vice, but rather with the praises which, in other times and countries, would have been bestowed on works of genius and virtue. The taste of the English public has certainly deteriorated within the last few years; and popularity, the surest index of the public's likings, though not of the writer's deservings, has attended works of which the great staple has been crime and blackguardism. A certain rude power, a sort of unhealthy energy, has enabled the writer to throw an interest round pickpockets and murderers; and if this interest were legitimately produced, by the exhibition of human passions modified by the circumstances of the actor—if it arose from the development of one real, living, thinking, doing, and suffering man's heart, we could only wonder at the author's choice of such a subject, but we should be ready to acknowledge that he had widened our sphere of knowledge—and made us feel, as we all do, without taking the same credit for it to ourselves that the old blockhead in France does, that being human, we have sympathies with all, even the lowest and wickedest of our kind. But the interest those works excite arises from no such legitimate source—not from the development of our common nature, but from the creation of a new one—from startling contrasts, not of two characters but of one—tenderness, generosity in one page; fierceness and murder in the next. But though our English tastes are so far deteriorated as to tolerate, or even to admire, the records of cruelty and sin now proceeding every day from the press—our English morals would recoil with horror from the deliberate wickedness which forms the great attraction of the French modern school of romance. The very subjects chosen for their novels, by the most popular of their female writers, shows a state of feeling in the authors more dreadful to contemplate than the mere coarse raw-head-and-bloody-bones descriptions of our chroniclers of Newgate. A married woman, the heroine—high in rank, splendid in intellect, radiant in beauty—has for the hero a villain escaped from the hulks. There is no record of his crimes—we are not called upon to follow him in his depredations, or see him cut throats in the scientific fashion of some of our indigenous rascals. He is the philosopher,—the instructor—the guide. The object of his introduction is to show the iniquity of human laws—the object of her introduction is to show the absurdity of the institution of marriage. This would never be tolerated in England. Again, a married woman is presented to us—for the sympathy which with us attends a young couple to the church-door, only begins in France after they have left it: as a child she has been betrothed to a person of her own rank—at five or six incurable idiocy takes possession of her proposed husband—but when she is eighteen the marriage takes place—the husband is a mere child still; for his intellect has continued stationary though his body has reached maturity—a more revolting picture was never presented than that of the condition of the idiot's wife—her horror of her husband—and of course her passion for another. The most interesting scenes between the lovers are constantly interrupted by the hideous representative of matrimony, the grinning husband, who rears his slavering countenance from behind the sofa, and impresses his unfortunate wife with a sacred awe for the holy obligations of marriage.
Again, a dandy of fifty is presented to us, whose affection for his ward has waited, of course, till she is wedded to another, to ripen into love. He still continues her protector against the advances of others; for jealousy is a good point of character in every one but the husband, and there it is only ridiculous. The husband in this case is another admirable specimen of the results of wedlock for life—he is a chattering, shallow pretender—a political economist, prodigiously dull and infinitely conceited—an exaggerated type of the Hume-Bowring statesman—and, as is naturally to be expected, our sympathies are awakened for the wretched wife, and we rejoice to see that her beauty and talents, her fine mind and pure ideas, are appreciated by a dashing young fellow, who outwits our original friend the dandy of fifty and the philosophical deputé; the whole leaving a pleasing impression on the reader's mind from the conviction that the heroine is no longer neglected.
From the similarity of these stories—and they are only taken at random from a great number—it will be seen that the spirit of almost all of them is the same. But when we go lower in the scale, and leave the class of philosophic novels, we find their tales of life and manners still more absurd in their total untrueness than the others were hateful in their design. There is a novel just now appearing in one of the most widely-circulated of the Parisian papers, so grotesquely overdone, that if it had been meant for a caricature of the worst parts of our own hulk-and-gallows authors, it would have been very much admired; but meant to be serious, powerful, harrowing, and all the rest of it, it is a most curious exhibition of a nation's taste and a writer's audacity. The Mysteries of Paris, by Eugene Sue, has been dragging its slow length along for a long time, and gives no sign of getting nearer its denouement than when it began. A sovereign prince is the hero—his own daughter, whom he has disowned, the heroine; and the tale commences by his fighting a man on the street, and taking a fancy to his unknown child, who is the inhabitant of one of the lowest dens in the St Giles' of Paris! The other dramatis personæ are convicts, receivers of stolen goods, murderers, intriguers of all ranks—the aforesaid prince, sometimes in the disguise of a workman, sometimes of a pickpocket, acting the part of a providence among them, rewarding the good and punishing the guilty. The English personages are the Countess Sarah McGregor—the lawful wife of the prince—her brother Tom, and Sir Walter Murph, Esquire. These are all jostled, and crowded, and pushed, and flurried—first in flash kens, where the language is slang; then in country farms, and then in halls and palaces—and so intermixed and confused, that the clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds. How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma to us; and we shall wait with some impatience to see how he will distribute his poetic justice, when he can't get his puppets to move another step. Horror seems the great ingredient in the present literary fare of France, and in the Mystères de Paris the most confirmed glutton of such delicacies may sup full of them. In the midst of such depraved and revolting exhibitions, it is a sort of satisfaction, though not of the loftiest kind, to turn to the coarse fun and ludicrous descriptions of Paul de Kock. And, after all, our friend Paul has not many more sins than coarseness and buffoonery to answer for. As to his attempting, of set purpose, to corrupt people's morals, it never entered into his head. He does not know what morals are; they never form any part of his idea of manners or character. If a good man comes in his way, he looks at him with a strange kind of unacquaintance that almost rises into respect; but he is certainly more affectionate, and on far better terms, with men about town—amative hairdressers, flirting grisettes, and the whole genus, male and female, of the epiciers. It would no doubt be an improvement if the facetious Paul could believe in the existence of an honest woman; but such women as come in his way he describes to the life. A ball in a dancing-master's private room up six pairs of stairs, a pic-nic to one of the suburbs, a dinner at a restaurateur's, or a family consultation on a proposal of marriage, are far more in Paul's way than tales of open horror or silk-and-satin depravity. One is only sorry, in the midst of so much gaiety and good-humour, to stumble on some scene or sentiment that gives on the inclination to throw the book in the fire, or start, like Cæsar, on the top of the diligence to pull the author's ears. But the next page sets all right again; and you go on laughing at the disasters of my neighbour Raymond, or admiring the graces or Chesterfieldian politeness of M. Bellequeue. French nature seems essentially different from all the other natures hitherto known; and yet, though so new, there never rises any doubt that it is a nature, a reality, as Thomas Carlyle says, and not a sham. The personages presented to us by Paul de Kock can scarcely, in the strict sense of the word, be called human beings; but they are French beings of real flesh and blood, speaking and thinking French in the most decided possible manner, and at intervals possessed of feelings which make us inclined to include them in the great genus homo, though with so many inseparable accidents, that it is impossible for a moment to shut one's eyes to the species to which they belong. But such as they are in their shops, and back-parlours, and ball-rooms, and fêtes champêtres, there they are in Paul de Kock—nothing extenuated, little set down in malice—vain, empty, frivolous, good-tempered, gallant, lively, and absurd. Let us go to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the anniversary of the marriage of M. and Madame Moutonnet on the day of St Eustache.
"At a little distance from the ball, towards the middle of the wood, a numerous party is seated on the grass, or rather on the sand; napkins are spread on the ground, and covered with plates and cold meat and fruits. The bottles are placed in the cool shade, the glasses are filled and emptied rapidly; good appetites and open air make every thing appear excellent. They make plates out of paper, and toss pieces of paté and sausage to each other. They eat, they drink, they sing, they laugh and play tricks. It seems a struggle who shall be funniest. It is well known that all things are allowable in the country; and the cits now assembled in the wood of Romainville seem fully persuaded of the fact. A jolly old governor of about fifty tries to carve a turkey, and can't succeed. A little woman, very red, very fat, and very round, hastens to seize a limb of the bird; she pulls at one side, the jolly old governor at the other—the leg separates at last, and the lady goes sprawling on the grass, while the gentleman topples over in the opposite direction with the remainder of the animal in his hand. The shouts of laughter redouble, and M. Moutonnet—such is the name of the jolly old governor—resumes his place, declaring that he will never try to carve any thing again. 'I knew you would never be able to manage it,' said a large woman bluntly, in a tone that agreed exactly with her starched and crabbed features. She was sitting opposite the stout gentleman, and had seen with indignation the alacrity with which the little lady had flown to M. Moutonnet's assistance.
"'In the twenty years we have been married,' she continued, 'have you ever carved any thing at home, sir?'
"'No, my dear, that's very true;' replied the stout gentleman in a submissive voice, and trying to smile his better half into good-humour.
"'You don't know how to help a dish of spinach, and yet you attempt a dish like that!'
"'My dear—in the country, you know——'
"'In the country, sir, as in the town, people shouldn't try things they can't perform.'
"'You know, Madame Moutonnet, that generally I never attempt any thing—but to day'——
"'To day you should have done as you do on other days,' retorted the lady.
"'Ah, but, my love, you forget that this is Saint Eustache——'
"'Yes, yes, this is Saint Eustache!' is repeated in chorus by the whole company, and the glasses are filled and jingled as before.
"'To the health of Eustache; Eustache for ever!'
"'To yours, ladies and gentlemen,' replied M. Moutonnet graciously smiling—'and yours, my angel.'
"It is to his wife M. Moutonnet addresses himself. She tried to assume an amiable look, and condescends to approach her glass to that of M. Eustache Moutonnet. M. Eustache Moutonnet is a rich laceman of the Rue St Martin; a man highly respected in trade; no bill of his was ever protested, nor any engagement failed in. For the thirty years he has kept shop he has been steadily at work from eight in the morning till eight at night. His department is to take care of the day-book and ledger; Madame Moutonnet manages the correspondence and makes the bargains. The business of the shop and the accounts are confided to an old clerk and Mademoiselle Eugenie Moutonnet, with whom we shall presently become better acquainted.
"M. Moutonnet, as you may perhaps already have perceived, is not commander-in-chief at hone. His wife directs, rules, and governs all things. When she is in good-humour—a somewhat extraordinary occurrence—she allows her husband to go and take his little cup of coffee, provided he goes for that purpose to the coffee-house at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil—for it is famous for its liberal allowance of sugar, and M. Moutonnet always brings home three lumps of it to his wife. On Sundays they dine a little earlier, to have time for a promenade to the Tuileries or the Jardin Turk. Excursions into the country are very rare, and only on extraordinary occasions, such as the fête-day of M. and Madame Moutonnet. That regular life does not hinder the stout lace-merchant from being the happiest of men—so true is it that what is one man's poison is another man's meat. M. Moutonnet was born with simple tastes—she required to be led and managed like a child. Don't shrug your shoulders at this avowal, ye spirited gentlemen, so proud of your rights, so puffed up with your merits. You! who think yourselves always masters of your actions, you yield to your passions every day! they lead you, and sometimes lead you very ill. Well, M. Moutonnet has no fear of that—he has no passions—he knows nothing but his trade, and obedience to his spouse. He finds that a man can be very happy, though he does not know how to carve a turkey, and lets himself be governed by his wife. Madame Moutonnet is long past forty, but it is a settled affair that she is never to be more than thirty-six. She never was handsome, but she is large and tall, and her husband is persuaded she is superb. She is not a coquette, but she thinks herself superior to every body else in talents and beauty. She never cared a rush about her husband, but if he was untrue to her she would tear his eyes out. Madame Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively jealous of her rights. A daughter is the sole issue of the marriage of M. Eustache Moutonnet and Mademoiselle Barbe Desormeaux. She is now eighteen years old, and at eighteen the young ladies in Paris are generally pretty far advanced. But Eugenie has been educated severely—and although possessed of a good deal of spirit, is timid, docile, submissive, and never ventures on a single observation in presence of her parents. She has cleverness, grace, and sensibility, but she is ignorant of the advantages she has received from nature—her sentiments are as yet concentrated at the bottom of her heart. She is not coquettish—or rather she scarcely ventures to give way to the inclination so natural to women, which leads them to please and to be pretty. But Eugenie has no need of those little arts, so indispensable to others, or to have recourse to her mirror every hour. She is well made, and she is beautiful; her eyes are soft and expressive, her voice is tender and agreeable, her brow is shadowed by dark locks of hair, her mouth furnished with fine white teeth. In short, she has that nameless something about her, which charms at first sight, which is not always possessed by greater beauties and more regular features. We now know all the Moutonnet family; and since we have gone so far, let us make acquaintance with the rest of the party who have come to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the Saint Eustache.
"The little woman who rushed so vigorously to the assistance of M. Moutonnet, is the wife of a tall gentleman of the name of Bernard, who is a toyman in the Rue St Denis. M. Bernard plays the amiable and the fool at the same time. He laughs and quizzes, makes jokes, and even puns; he is the wit of the party. His wife has been rather good-looking, and wishes to be so still. She squeezes in her waist till she can hardly breathe, and takes an hour to fit her shoes on—for she is determined to have a small foot. Her face is a little too red; but her eyes are very lively, and she is constantly trying to give them as mischievous an expression as she can. Madame Bernard has a great girl of fifteen, whom she dresses as if she were five, and treats occasionally to a new doll, by way of keeping her a child. By the side of Madame Bernard is seated a young man of eighteen, who is almost as timid as Eugenie, and blushes when he is spoken to, though he has stood behind a counter for six months. He is the son of a friend of M. Bernard, and his wife has undertaken to patronize him, and introduce him to good society.
"A person of about forty years of age, with one of those silly countenances which there is no mistaking at the first glance, is seated beside Eugenie. M. Dupont—such is his name—is a rich grocer of the Rue aux Ours. He wears powder and a queue, because he fancies they are becoming, and his hairdresser has told him that they are very aristocratic. His coat of sky-blue, and his jonquil-coloured waistcoat, give him still more the appearance of a simpleton, and agree admirably with the astonished expression of his gooseberry eyes. He dangles two watch-chains, that hang down his nankeen trowsers, with great satisfaction, and seems struck with admiration at the wisdom of his own remarks. He thinks himself captivating and full of wit. He has the presumption of ignorance, propped up by money. Finally, he is a bachelor, which gives him great consideration in all the families where there are marriageable daughters. M. and Madame Gerard, perfumers in the Rue St Martin, are also of the party. The perfumer enacts the gallant gay Lothario, and in his own district has the reputation of a prodigious rake, though he is ugly, and ill-made, and squints. But he fancies he overcomes all these drawbacks by covering himself with odours and perfumes—accordingly, you smell him half an hour before he comes in sight. His wife is young and pretty. She married him at fifteen, and has a boy of nine, who looks more like her brother than her son. The little Gerard hollos and jumps about, breaks the glasses and bottles, and makes as much noise as all the rest of the company put together. 'He's a little lion,' exclaims M. Gerard; 'he's exactly what I was. You never could hear yourselves speak wherever I was, at his age. People were delighted with me. My son is my perfect image.'
"M. Gerard's sister, an old maid of forty-five, who takes every opportunity of declaring that she never intends to marry, and sighs every tine M. Dupont looks at her, is next to M. Moutonnet. The old clerk of the laceman—M. Bidois—who waits for Madame Moutonnet's permission before he opens his mouth, and fills his glass every time she is not looking—is placed at the side of Mademoiselle Cecile Gerard; who, though she swears every minute that she never will marry, and that she hates the men, is very ill pleased to have old M. Bidois for her neighbour, and hints pretty audibly that Madame Bernard monopolizes all the young beaux. A young man of about twenty, tall, well-made, with handsome features, whose intelligent expression announces that he is intended for higher things than perpetually to be measuring yards of calico, is seated at the right hand of Eugenie. That young man, whose name is Adolphe, is assistant in a fashionable warehouse where Madame Moutonnet deals; and as he always gives good measure, she has asked him to the fête of St Eustache. And now we are acquainted with all the party who are celebrating the marriage-day of M. Moutonnet."
We are not going to follow Paul de Kock in the adventures of all the party so carefully described to us. Our object in translating the foregoing passage, was to enable our readers to see the manner of people who indulge in pic-nics in the wood of Romainville, desiring them to compare M. Moutonnet and his friends, with any laceman and his friends he may choose to fix upon in London. A laceman as well to do in the world as M. Moutonnet, a grocer as rich as M. Dupont, and even a perfumer as fashionable as M. Gerard, would have a whitebait dinner at Blackwall, or make up a party to the races at Epsom—and as to admitting such a humble servitor as M. Bidois to their society, or even the unfriended young mercer's assistant, M. Adolphe, they would as soon think of inviting one of the new police. Five miles from town our three friends would pass themselves off for lords, and blow-up the waiter for not making haste with their brandy and water, in the most aristocratic manner imaginable. In France, or at least in Paul de Kock, there seems no straining after appearances. The laceman continues a laceman when he is miles away from the little back shop; and even the laceman's lady has no desire to be mistaken for the wife of a squire. Madame Moutonnet seems totally unconscious of the existence of any lady whatever, superior to herself in rank or station. The Red Book is to her a sealed volume. Her envies, hatreds, friendships, rivalries, and ambitions, are all limited to her own circle. The wife of a rich laceman, on the other hand, in England, most religiously despises the wives of almost all other tradesmen; she scarcely knows in what street the shop is situated, but from the altitudes of Balham or Hampstead, looks down with supreme disdain on the toiling creatures who stand all day behind a counter. The husband, in the same way, manages to cast off every reminiscence of the shop, in the course of his three miles in the omnibus, and at six or seven o'clock you might fancy they were a duke and duchess, sitting in a gaudily furnished drawing-room, listening to two elegant young ladies torturing a piano, and another still more elegant young lady severely flogging a harp. The effect of this, so far as our English Paul de Kocks are concerned, is, that their linen-drapers, and lacemen, and rich perfumers, are represented assuming a character that does not belong to them, and aping people whom they falsely suppose to be their betters; whereas the genuine Paul paints the Parisian tradesmen without any affectation at all. Ours are made laughable by the common farcical attributes of all pretensions, great or small; while real unsophisticated shopkeeping (French) nature is the staple of Paul's character-sketches, and they are more valuable, and in the end more interesting, accordingly. Who cares for the exaggerated efforts of a Manchester warehouseman to be polished and gentlemanly? It is only acting after all, and gives us no insight into his real character, or the character of his class, any more than Mr Coates' anxiety to be Romeo enlightened us as to his disposition in other respects. The Manchester warehouseman, though he fails in his attempt at fashionable parts, may be a very estimable and pains-taking individual, and, with the single exception of that foible, offers nothing to the most careful observer to distinguish him from the stupid and respectable in any part of the world. And in this respect, any one starting as the chronicler of citizen life among us, would labour under a great disadvantage. Whether our people are phlegmatic, or stupid, or sensible—all three of which epithets are generally applicable to the same individual—or that they have no opportunities of showing their peculiarities from the domestic habits of the animal—it is certain that, however better they may be qualified for the business of life than their neighbours, they are far less fitted for the pages of a book. And the proof of it is this, that wherever any of our novelists has introduced a tradesman, he has either been an invention altogether, or a caricature. Even Bailie Nicol Jarvie never lived in the Saut Market in half such true flesh and blood as he does in Rob Roy. At all events, the inimitable Bailie is known to the universe at large by the additions made to his real character by the prodigal hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous contrasts in which he is placed with the caterans and reivers of the hills. In the city of Glasgow he was looked upon, and justly, as an honour to the gude town—consulted on all difficult matters, and famous for his knowledge of the world and his natural sagacity. Would this have been a fit subject for description? or is it just to think of the respectable Bailie in the ridiculous point of view in which he is presented to us in the Highlands? How would Sir Peter Laurie look if he had been taken long ago by Algerine pirates, and torn, with all his civic honours thick upon him, from the magisterial chair, and made hairdresser to the ladies of the harem—threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing, as he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes scarcely more enormous? Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from odd juxtapositions. He knows nothing about caves and prisons and brigands—but he knows every corner of coffee-houses, and beer-shops, and ball-rooms. And these ball-rooms give him the command of another set of characters, totally unknown to the English world of fiction, because non-existent in England. With us, no shop-boy or apprentice would take his sweetheart to a public hop at any of the licenced music-houses. No decent girl would go there, nor even any girl that wished to keep up the appearance of decency. No flirtations, to end in matrimony, take their rise between an embryo boot-maker and a barber's daughter, in the course of the chaine Anglaise beneath the trees of the Green Park, or even at the Yorkshire Stingo. Fathers have flinty hearts, and the above-mentioned barber would probably increase the beauty of his daughter's "bonny black eye," by giving her another, if she talked of going to a ball, whether in a room or the open air. The Puritans have left their mark. Dancing is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual M.C. But let us follow the barber, or rather hairdresser—for the mere gleaner of beards is not intended by the name—into his own amusements. In Paul de Kock he goes to a coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee, and pockets the entire sugar; or to a ball, where he performs all the offices of a court chamberlain, and captivates all hearts by his graceful deportment. His wife, perhaps, goes with him, and flirts in a very business-like manner with a tobacconist; and his daughter is whirled about in a waltz by Eugene or Adolphe, the young confectioner, with as much elegance and decorum as if they were a young marquis and his bride in the dancing hall at Devonshire House. Our English friend goes to enjoy a pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a cigar, and gin and water, at the neighbouring inn. Or when he determines on having a night of real rational enjoyment, he goes to some tavern where singing is the order of the evening. A stout man in the chair knocks on the table, and being the landlord, makes disinterested enquiries if every gentleman has a bumper. He then calls on himself for a song, and states that he is to be accompanied on the piano by a distinguished performer; whereupon, a tall young man of a moribund expression of countenance, and with his hair closely pomatumed over his head, rises, and, after a low bow, seats himself at the instrument. The stout man sings, the young man plays, and thunders of applause, and various fresh orders for kidneys and strong ale, and welch rabbits and cold-without, reward their exertions. Drinking goes on for some time, and waiters keep flying about with dishes of all kinds, and the hairdresser becomes communicative to his next neighbour, a butcher from Whitechapel, and they exchange their sentiments about kidneys and music in general, and the kidneys and music now offered to them in particular. In a few minutes, a gentleman with a strange obliquity in his vision, seated in the middle of the coffee-room, takes off his hat, and after a thump on the table from the landlord's hammer, commences a song so intensely comic, that when it is over, the orders for supper and drink are almost unanimous. The house is now full, the theatres have discharged their hungry audiences, and a distinguished guinea-a-week performer seats himself in the very next box to the hairdresser. That worthy gentleman by this time is stuffed so full of kidneys, and has drank so many glasses of brandy and water, that he can scarcely understand the explanations of the Whitechapel butcher, who has a great turn for theatricals, and wishes to treat the dramatic performer to a tumbler of gin-twist. Another knock on the table produces a momentary silence, and a little man starts off with an extempore song, where the conviviality of the landlord, and the goodness of his suppers, are duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last, time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up in the police-office. The Frenchman, on the other hand, never gets into mischief from an overdose of eau sucrée, though sometimes he certainly becomes very rombustious from a glass or two of vin ordinaire; and nothing astonishes us so much as the small quantities of small drink which have an effect on the brains of the steadiest of the French population. They get not altogether drunk, but decidedly very talkative, and often quarrelsome, on a miserable modicum of their indigenous small beer, to a degree which would not be excusable if it were brandy. We constantly find whole parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious state of excitement after two rounds of a bottle—jostling the peasants, and talking more egregious nonsense than before. And when they quarrel, what a Babel of words, and what a quakerism of hands! Instead of a round or two between the parties, as it would be in our own pugnacious disagreements, they merely, when it comes to the worst, push each other from side to side, and shout lustily for the police; and squalling women, and chattering men, and ignorant country people, and elegant mercers' apprentices, and gay-mannered grocers, hustle, and scream, and swear, and lecture, and threaten, and bluster—but not a single blow! The guardian of the public peace appears, and the combatants evanish into thin air; and in a few minutes after this dreadful mêlée, the violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and all goes "gaily as a marriage-bell." We don't say, at the present moment, that one of these methods of conducting a quarrel is better than the other, (though we confess we are rather partial to a hit in the bread-basket, or a tap on the claret-cork)—all we mean to advance is, that with the materials to work upon, Paul de Kock, as a faithful describer of real scenes, has a manifest advantage over the describer of English incidents of a parallel kind.